Mbowo lays the blame for that squarely on governmental failure, pointing out that Kenya — like all its neighbors — receives “millions” of dollars from FIFA, the game’s governing body, but has little or no infrastructure to show for it. “Where is the money going?” he said.
Just as significant, though, is the way that history of poor governance, insufficient funding and corruption has discouraged European investment in East Africa.
“If you see Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, all these East African countries who perform poorly, people will ask why they should invest there,” said Christian Ungruhe, an anthropologist who has studied soccer dynamics in East and West Africa. A club weighing entry, he said, would see “there’s no government structure, no emphasis on football at the school level.” Instead, he said, it would “have to build everything from scratch.”
The contrast on the other side of the continent is stark. Senegal, the current champion of Africa, is home to a growing number of academies, many of them backed by investment from top-tier French teams like Lyon and Marseille. The Dutch team Utrecht has an outpost in Ghana. Brasseries, one of Cameroon’s most productive academies, was established with the help of Castel, the French brewing giant.
“We follow the European model,” said Saer Seck, one of the founders of Diambars, a Senegalese academy that discovered several members of Senegal’s squad for Qatar. “Discipline, impact, endurance. But we try to encourage creativity: If a player wants to dribble, who am I to tell him that it’s not the best strategy? He’s on the field, I’m not.”
The Diambars facilities, like its thinking, are European. Its players, who arrive as young as age 12, have access to GPS tracking tools, video analysis sessions and even cryotherapy chambers, Seck said. They train on six manicured fields, all wearing the same equipment, thanks to a sponsorship arrangement with Nike.